Oh man, so much happening, so little time, and I’m so lazy!  In a rare situation, both the boys are asleep and so is Hazel and Jenn’s out on the town with a friend so I’m going to type as fast as I can to try and bring you some much needed IHJ love before somebody starts crying or something suddenly needs to be cleaned.  Anyone who has recently stubbed their toe in the dark on the suitcases still sitting next to my bed knows that the most recent news was that the entire Richards clan just made it back from an all-out Washington fiesta at the end of July/ beginning of August.  There was way to much fun had and friends seen to cram into one post, and quite honestly I don’t even have all the pictures in one place yet, so I’ll start at the end since that’s what I’ve got.

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While Chris was at SOS last month the kids and I drove to California to visit with family and friends. My mom was brave enough to fly out to Abq and drive with me. It was an adventure. The drive over there included a stop in Colorado Springs to see some friends, a trip to the emergency room when Calvin got both his legs full of splinters and an almost towing when Jonah managed to silently render the passenger side door of my van unclosable. Fortunately Mario at the Reno Kia service center was able to help me fix it over the phone. We were so close to Elk Grove we didn’t know if we could stand taking the rest of the day to get towed to Reno (from nowheretown, NV) and get the car fixed. After three days in the car with three kids and a dog I never thought I’d say “I’m so glad to be driving again!” But I did. So here are some random pictures, possibly in no particular order. If I feel like it I’ll do another post later with more pictures.

The boys took swimming lessons while we were there (I got the idea from reading sirmaxalot when Christen took her boys to swimming lessons in WA.)

Jonah is the one floating.

Calvin and I did a class together.

The last day of the class the kids were offered the chance to jump off the diving board. The boys were so excited to do it. There were not many kids that wanted to, so they each got to go a few times.

While the boys swam Hazel hung out with my mom and snacked it up. (more…)

Chris helped me find an easier way to do posts. My Mac was not wanting to work with our website, so I was having a really hard time doing quick posts and so I wasn’t doing it. So here are few pictures to get the ball rolling.

Chris and Hazel having a conversation.

The boys being cute.

Ellie wanted to sit on Hazel’s lap. Turns out babies don’t have much lap to work with, but she found a comfy spot.

I like this one because Hazel looks so serious and you can see her little toes sticking out from under Ellie’s collar.

So excited!

Sometimes there are ninja fights before bedtime. Naturally they must wear their goggles.

We’ve been swimming as much as possible. Hazel gets tuckered out. (So do we!)

I’m going to try and keep this short (for me) because otherwise I’ll never catch up on posting.  Personally I think that it is unfair that I have been blessed with children who are photogenic and do cute things faster than I can tell people about it, but I’m doing the best I can.  Anyway, here we go… (more…)

I know this is a bit non-sequitur, but I’ve been having some issues with my host recently and almost lost some backup files. The point is that a while back when my sister decided that she was getting tired of both the first and second worlds and decided to check out that third one everyone was talking about I set up a temporary website to help her stay in contact. In an attempt to keep the posts for posterity and for those of you who missed them the first time round, I’ve copied them over to this site in the several posts below. So, enjoy them or ignore them (if you plan on enjoying them, read them chronologically, from bottom to top). Sorry for the lack of pictures, but as I understood it most of the time she was posting from a computer made of bamboo and birds were carrying the messages back to America.

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